20080430

Jews around the world, and particularly in Israel, commemorate the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, as well as those who were able to fight back, beginning Wednesday evening, April 30, through sundown, May 1st.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabriel Ashkenazi, with a delegation of IDF top brass beneath the "Work Will Set You Free" inscription over the gates of the infamous Auschwitz death camp.

The central theme of this year's commemorations is "Choose Life." Last year, it was "Bearing Witness." At 10 PM, a symposium was held on the topic of "Choose Life," with the participation of Holocaust survivors and Yad Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev.

"Israel's Jews are no more the cause of Arab Fundamentalist rage than they were the cause of European Fascism. We, as always, are the miner's canary, singled out as, and the first victims of national or global unrest."

A photo-essay from last year's Yom Ha Shoah, Holocaust Memorial Day from Israel National News.com

IDF Chief of Staff Gabriel Ashkenazi looks at the ovens used to burn Jews in Auschwitz. Ashkenazi's father was a Holocaust survivor; his mother a Jewish refugee from Syria.(Israel news photo: IDF Spokesman)

The Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum launched English and Arabic video channels on Tuesday, just two days before Jews around the world begin their annual commemorations of the Holocaust.

Yad Vashem, the world's largest repository of information on the Holocaust, launched two The Arabic channel has testimonies and archival footage about the Holocaust with Arabic subtitles.

News from Polish Radio World ServiceJews and Poles meet for 'March of the Living' 30.04.2008Listen 3,37 MB The crowd walks between two German Nazi concentration camps, the same way along which camp inmates marched to their death in the gas chambers back in the times of World War Two, continuees Aharon Tamir: 'We march from Auschwitz I as the "March of the Living" contrary to the "march of death" during the Holocaust. We come to Birkenau and over there we have a ceremony. We pray, we speak, we commemorate, we say Kaddish, we speak about the future. That's the idea. What we call this educational project is "From Holocaust to Revival" - from the Shoah to the new future and the new blessings for Israel and the world. We will continue with this as much as we can and we added last year a lot of non-Jews, especially Poles. In this march we will have close to two thousand Polish participants marching with us on the Holocaust Memorial Day.'

Several thousand Jews from all over the world, together with two thousand Poles, will take part in the annual March of the Living on the first of May to commemorate the memory of the victims of Holocaust.

"March of the Living" has been held annually since 1988 by the Israeli Education Ministry and the "March of the Living" organization. It takes place always ten days after the Jewish Pesach or Passover holiday. On this day, Jews all over the world hold prayer vigils commemorating the victims of the German Nazi Holocaust.

'We bring thousands of people, youngsters, adults, mainly Jewish, but there are a lot that are not Jewish, from all over the world - from about fifty five countries. They come to Poland to visit the Holocaust sites, what remains from the large and wonderful Jewish community that was here and perished during the Holocaust. They visit Polish sites, meet Polish youngsters. We believe that we also have to interact with Poland today. And then, after they visit all of Poland, we bring all of them to Auschwitz Birkenau on the Holocaust Memorial Day to march,' said Aharon Tamir, director general of the March of the Living events.

A Tel Aviv University report reveals alarming increase in number of violent attacks against Jews worldwide; study cites threefold rise in number of particularly violent assaults.

The number of severe violent attacks rose threefold in 2007.

According to the study, 632 incidents of racially-motivated violence against Jews have been reported in 2007, compared to 593 in 2006. Fifty-seven percent of the attacks in 2007 have been classified as "major attacks" – three times higher than in 2006, when the number of major attacks stood at 19.

The Institute's report for 2006 reflected an even more alarming growth in anti-Semitism worldwide, claiming attacks against Jews doubled during that year. (Source Ynet News).

The Anti-Defamation League's 2007 Survey of American Attitudes Towards Jews in America (a national telephone survey of 2,000 American adults conducted October 6 through October 19) found that 15% of Americans - or nearly 35 million adults - hold views about Jews that are "unquestionably anti-Semitic," compared to 14% in 2005. Previous ADL surveys over the last decade had indicated that anti-Semitism was in decline (graph). Nine years ago, in 1998, the number of Americans with hardcore anti-Semitic beliefs had dropped to 12% from 20% in 1992.

Anti-Jewish Stereotypes Remain Consistent

The survey found that 31% of Americans believe Jews are more loyal to Israel than America, down from 33% in 2005; in 2002 it was 33%; in 1998, it was 31%; in 1992; 35%. (graph)

More than one quarter – 27% of the American people – believe Jews were responsible for the death of Christ, down from 30% in 2005, up from 25% in 2002. (graph)

Fifteen percent (15%) of the general population believes that Jews have "Too much power in the U.S." -- unchanged from 2005; 67% for those who are the most anti-Semitic.

ADL surveys in 11 European countries released in May and July 2007 revealed that fully half of the Europeans surveyed believe Jews are not loyal to their country and more than one-third believe that Jews have too much power in business and finance.

20080428

Sworn to teach Muslims a lesson about the cost of Jewish blood, the IDF's former Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Arye Eldad is a Knesset member who is responding to calls from the nationalist movement for his own party - to keep all Israel's recaptured lands. And he doesn't care what Washington, Riyadh, or anybody but God thinks.

Watch his tempered warning to the world for backstabbing Israel by enabling Iran's nuclear weapons development and forestalling action by distracting Israel with concessioning to a terror-drunk, Jihadist enemy.

20080425

Preview: The IAF. The Israeli Air Force has to prepare for anything says one of its officers, because if Israel loses just one war, it will cease to exist. Bob Simon's report airs Sunday, April 27, at 7 p.m. ET/PT

Air Force Chief On Iran Threat: The head of Israel's Air Force, Maj. Gen. Eliezer Shkedy, tells Bob Simon the threat from Iran is real and that it can't be ignored.

Bob Simon's Notebook: Israel's Air Force has been its first line of defense for 60 years. Bob Simon reports that they are prepared for any threat.

What about the fact that the dead child identified as Mohamed al Dura was brought into the hospital between noon and 1 PM while the alleged shooting occurred at 3PM? Making the motions of someone who turns back a clock, France2 News-director, Madame Arlette Chabot explained there was “some kind of time change that day in Gaza.”

Charles Enderlin depicted the Israeli army 'killing' young 'bystander,' Mohammed al-Durah, according to the video footage he edited. In the 10 seconds of raw footage which continues beyond the point Enderlin brands al-Durah "Dead" (released by France2 News under subpoena by the Philippe Karsenty-libel court) it's obvious that you can see the boy lift his right elbow to peer-out for directions.

Mohammed is neither an innocent, nor a bystander. Neither is the producer, Enderlin, or the ethics of France2TV journalism management. Will the truth prevail in court? The verdict will be returned on May 21, 2008.

An enemy’s ‘center of gravity’ is the necessary but vulnerable precondition of its strength. With respect to Israel, Carl von Clausewitz's ("war is merely the continuation of policy by other means") dictum that in “small states dependent on greater ones," it lies generally in the army of their allies would seem to apply. However, since the army or military power of Israel’s ally, the United States, cannot itself be directly attacked, it must be outflanked by an assault on public opinion”—in a democracy, a force more powerful than armies.

Israel’s ‘center of gravity’ is public opinion in the United States. Hence we need to ask: What is there about American public opinion regarding Israel that endows Israeli government with legitimacy and its ruling elites—politicians and judges, academics and journalists—with respectability? The answer: Israel’s reputation as “the only democracy in the Middle East.”

Potential terrorists should be sent to rehabilitation centres and deradicalised by exposure to intense and substantial periods of genuine piety, Britain's first counter-extremism thinktank said yesterday. The recommendation came from the Quilliam Foundation, established by former activists of radical Islamist groups to challenge their ideology.

At its launch at the British Museum in London, the deputy director and author, Ed Husain, who used to be in the radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir, said there was a sense of Muslim unity in the fight "to rescue our faith from those who have hijacked it".

Aside from think-tank work of getting their ideas into the public domain, the foundation also plans to set up a task force of ex-radicals who can "go to the hot spots and work on the grass roots to deradicalize people and the contacts that we have known in these movements for a long time," Mr. Nawaz says.

Yet in the complex constellation of ever-changing British Muslim movements, it is too early to say whether the Quilliam Foundation will prove to be an effective and exemplary voice that resonates with the wider community.

Some critics have warned that it is just another stripe in the colorful and contrasting rainbow of Muslim opinion in Britain. Others say that they are "defectors" who have moved to the mainstream where they will have little chance of appealing to young radicals.

"They will have a hard time reaching out to people who are actively involved in extremist organizations," says Peter Neumann, director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence in London. "But they probably do have the capacity to go into schools and certain other environments and have some leverage there because they are Muslims who were involved in radical activities."

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, signaled last week that Britain could not arrest its way out of the terrorism threat. "We need to prevent people from becoming terrorists and supporting terrorists in the first place," she said. "That means challenging the sort of ideology that supports terrorism."

Mr. Neumann says the government is disillusioned with established groups like the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) for failing to combat extremism – both vocally and effectively.

The British Museum is the surprising venue for theologians, thinkers and socialite Jemima Khan, all coming together to support the launch of a new think tank to counter Al Qaeda's world-view.

And this seemingly bizarre gathering exposes the question at the heart of the whirlwind romance between the Quilliam Foundation and policymakers

Is the launch of this campaigning organisation a step forward in the battle of ideas - or just another group with some kind of official pat on the head - but no credibility on the street?

Since the London bombings of July 2005 a whole string of Muslim organisations have come forward, claiming to have the answers to violent extremism.

The Muslim Council of Britain, the main umbrella body, has been marginalised in an ongoing political row - but two others touted as significant players have had little impact.

Vast sums of money are being spent on research into violent extremism, and entire government teams have sprung from nowhere to try to find answers.

Then into this mix came Ed Husain. Last year he published The Islamist, his story of a life in hardline community politics.

He was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), a global body calling for a single Islamic state across

the Middle East. Now Ed Husain and another, less well-known, man, Maajid Nawaz, are launching Quilliam (named after a 19th century British convert) as the counter-argument to extremism.

They say Islam in its purest universal form, as the last message of God to mankind, sits perfectly well in modern multicultural societies - providing that Muslims find the right way to express their faith.

And if British Muslims rediscover the purity of the faith, they argue, they can cast off the political and cultural baggage that would see Islam as the enemy of the West.

Vaunted new Muslim organisations exonerate government of its responsibilities and sideline credible voices: they're anything but moderate

The Quilliam Foundation's leading lights could not be less representative of mainstream Muslim opinion in Britain. But the signs are that the government is nevertheless throwing its weight behind the organisation - after the failure of earlier efforts to build up the Sufi Muslim Council and British Muslim Forum as an alternative to the umbrella Muslim Council of Britain. Officials from Hazel Blears' communities department recently made clear to a Muslim organisation involved in youth work that it would need to line up with the Quilliam Foundation if it wanted government funding.

The Quilliam Foundation itself is being funded by Kuwaiti businessmen, Husain told me yesterday, but could not reveal their identities. He added that he would be happy to take government funds if there were no strings attached.

This is a perilous game. Those like Quilliam and its friends who claim that terror attacks are all about a rejection of our way of life rather than western war-making and support for dictatorships in the Muslim world may help get the government off the hook of its own responsibility.

But if we want to stop such attacks in Britain, rather than indulge in shadow boxing with an elastically-defined extremism, there needs to be engagement with - not ostracism of - credible Islamist groups, as the former head of Scotland Yard Special Branch's Muslim contact unit has argued.

"Jihadi terrorists aren't WWII-style soldiers, who could be trusted to return to civilian life once their war ended. At the same time, they aren't like normal murderers -- not only because their crimes are more monstrous, but because they aren't animated by the usual criminal motivations of greed and lust. The threat of jail -- or even the gallows -- has no relevance to a jihadi. He wants to become a martyr. His crimes are motivated by the quasi-psychotic delusion that God delights in the random killing of innocent civilians."

Of course, the line between religion and psychosis has always been blurry. Let a man mutter that he hears other-worldly voices in his head, and we back away, avoiding eye contact. But let the man then specify that the whisperings he hears are God's, and we instead nod politely, and perhaps even take one of his pamphlets. It's only because of our culturally rooted respect for organized religion that we've traditionally ignored the similarities between psychosis and divine revelation.

That should have changed in 2001. Though the 9/11 killers were not technically psychotic in a medical sense, that should now be seen as a distinction without a difference.

By their own admission, sworn jihadis believe that mysterious forces beyond human control require God's servants to engage in indiscriminate slaughter. How is this different from the violent schizoid who gets locked away in an asylum for the rest of his life (with nary a protest from NGOs or the left-wing media, it might be added) for exactly the same reason, minus Allah?

(...) The United States has laws that keep dangerous lunatics behind bars indefinitely. Which is to say that Haq would be treated as a man who is neither criminal nor "unlawful combatant," but rather as a damaged human specimen who, by reason of deadly mental infection, cannot be trusted to mingle freely among his fellow humans without trying to kill them.

Bipolar or not, is this not the very definition of just about every jihadi terrorist?

"We know that ideologies can make monsters out of some human beings and smoke out of other, innocent, ones. The gas chambers in Auschwitz did not begin with the construction of the buildings, they began with antisemitic words pronounced by antisemitic ideologues.

Today, Iran is the first and only country to threaten another UN member state with annihilation. “With God’s help, the countdown button for the destruction of the Zionist regime has been pushed”, announced the Iranian president. “By God’s will, we will witness the destruction of this regime in the near future.” The shocking malice of such messages leads many people to suppress them or block them out.

I think our task is to do the opposite: To take the Iranian leader’s Weltanschauung seriously as a specific outlook with its own principles and history and to look inside Ahmadinejad’s fantasy world and seek to grasp the immanent logic behind his attacks, even if this involves insights which may send a shiver down the spine.

Our discomfort begins with the notion of holy war. Can a war ever be holy or the holy ever be a matter of war? The collocation seems to be taken from a historical movie. Continental Europe’s last religious war took place 350 years ago. America has never experienced a war of this kind.

But what we are faced with right now is precisely a holy war. In his first major speech, in October 2005, the one that gained him notoriety, Ahmadinejad declared that the Zionist regime in Israel “must be eliminated from the pages of history.” Many will recall this quote. But only very few people have read the rest of the speech and so understood the context of the threat. Let me please quote just three more sentences of this famous talk.

In it, Ahmadinejad said: “We are in the process of a historical war between the World of Arrogance and the Islamic world, and this war has been going on for hundreds of years.”

So as we can see, the roots of this “historical war” have nothing to do with Israel or the Middle East conflict. The speaker views the destruction of Israel as a stage in a war that started long before the foundation of Israel. But what is meant by “World of Arrogance”? I will come back to this point.

He also said: “We have to understand the depth of the disgrace of the enemy, until our holy hatred expands continuously and strikes like a wave.” Here a religiously inspired feeling of superiority is contrasted with the “depth of the disgrace of the enemy.”

But the notion of a “holy hatred” is also striking. This hatred is unconditional: it cannot be moderated through any kind of Western or Jewish behavior. It currently expresses itself in the first instance as hatred of a recalcitrant and rather pro-Western Iranian people that has to be silenced through stonings, public executions, mass arrests, torture and censorship. Above and beyond this, the expression of this “holy hatred” is destined to “expand continuously” to a global level and to overwhelm the world like a mighty tsunami.

Third and final quotation from the speech: “In this very grave war, many people are trying to scatter grains of desperation and hopelessness. They ask: ‘Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?’ But you had best know that this goal is attainable, and surely can be achieved.”

Imagine if the leader of a medium-sized Western country, for example Mr Berlusconi, the former Italian head of government, had made a speech in which he talked about a historical war against the Islamic world, denounced the “depth of the Islamic world’s disgrace”, summoned up Christianity’s “holy hatred” of Islam and finally pronounced the goal of erasing Saudi Arabia and Pakistan from the map realizable.

We know what the justified consequences would be: angry demonstrations and critical headlines throughout the world, a special meeting of the UN Security Council, condemnation by the General Assembly and so on.

The fact that the statements I have cited aroused no anger in the West and, indeed, barely registered with Western governments, media and academics – despite the fact that MEMRI published them back in October 2005! – speaks, I think, volumes about the current condition of the Western world.

In Europe the basic reflex of non-recognition works like this: if Ahmadinejad were to have said something of the kind, then the Bush administration might feel vindicated. And since we don’t like Bush, Ahmadinejad didn’t say it – end of story.

Here the perception of reality has been corrupted by political considerations. I know people who are afraid to write the truth about the Iranian regime because they are scared of immediately being placed in a political category where they do not (wish to be perceived to) belong.

While the suicide cult, the reverence for the Twelfth Imam and the contempt for democracy and reason are of Islamic provenance, this antisemitism, based on the notorious forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and fantasies about a Jewish world conspiracy, has far more to do with Nazi ideology, an ideology that was very popular in Iran in the 30s and 40s.

“The extermination of Jewry throughout the world,” declared a Nazi directive from 1943, is “the precondition for an enduring peace.” Liberation through annihilation. This is similar to the mission that Islamism has set out upon whose first target is Israel. As Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put it, “The Zionist regime will be wiped out and humanity will be liberated.”

He reiterated this belief in his most recent speech at the United Nations in September 2007: “The age of darkness will end”, he enthused to the General Assembly and “the peoples in Europe and America will be liberated from the burdens the Zionists have inflicted on them”.

So let me now sum up on this final point: There are other dictatorships in the world. But only in Iran are the fantasy-worlds of antisemitism and religious mission linked with technological megalomania and the physics of mass destruction. The specific danger presented by the Iranian nuclear option stems from the unique ideological atmosphere surrounding it – a mixture of holy war and high-tec, of antisemitism and weapons-grade uranium, of death-wish and missile research, of Shiite messianism and plutonium."

This paper was presented at Columbia University, New York City, March 6, 2008 under the auspices of Columbia's chapter of "Scholars of Peace in the Middle East" (SPME) ·

20080415

Mark Thompson, the Director General of the BBC, tonight warned broadcasters against becoming overly-cautious in their reporting on Islam for fear of causing offense to Muslims.

Speaking at Westminster Cathedral, Mr Thompson, a practising Catholic, said there was “a growing nervousness about discussion about Islam and its relationship to the traditions and values of British and Western society as a whole”.

He said that the BBC and other major channels “have a special responsibility” to ensure that debates about “faith and society” and about any religion “should not be foreclosed or censored”.

20080411

Opposing camps of foreign policy experts are vying for influence with Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, according to the New York Times in "2 Camps Trying to Influence McCain on Foreign Policy."

"... now one component of the fractious Republican Party foreign policy establishment — the so-called pragmatists, some of whom have come to view the Iraq war or its execution as a mistake — is expressing concern that Mr. McCain might be coming under increased influence from a competing camp, the neoconservatives, whose thinking dominated President Bush’s first term and played a pivotal role in building the case for war.

The concerns have emerged in the weeks since Mr. McCain became his party’s presumptive nominee and began more formally assembling a list of foreign policy advisers. Among those on the list are several prominent neoconservatives, including Robert Kagan, an author who helped write much of the foreign policy speech that Mr. McCain delivered in Los Angeles on March 26, in which he described himself as “a realistic idealist.” Others include the security analyst Max Boot and a former United Nations ambassador, John R. Bolton. "

Atlas Shrugs reports from the Freedom of Speech in the Age of Jihad event in NYC in photo and video. Sponsored by Roger Kimball, editor of the New Criterion and Clifford D. May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, speakers included Steven Emerson, Frank J. Gaffney, Ibn Warraq, Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant, Rachel Ehrenfeld, and Robert Spencer.

Red Country's Jonathan Constantine asks concerned citizens to protest against the Muslim Students' Union's screening of the film, The USA vs. al-Arian on April 17th at the Woodbridge 5 Theater on Barranca Parkway in Irvine. (Courtesy of Janet Levy-Ross). The theater's phone number is (949) 733-0980. Their corporate office in Dallas is at(877) 884-6494.

Update 14 April from Red Country: Early this morning, Starplex Cinemas commented on my previous post that the Sami Al-Arian film screening and legal defense fund-raiser scheduled for April 17 in Irvine has been canceled.

Starplex Cinemas has no ties or relations with the organization that rented the theater to do a film screening. The intent and content of the film was not disclosed. We have not political affilication and have canceled the screening.

We thank the community for brining this to our attention. For any questions or comments, please contact Kristen Wheaton at kwheaton@starplexcinemas.com.

In a phone call with Wheaton later this morning, she explained that the decision was made because of the highly politicized nature of the screening, and the lack of disclosure by two female representatives from the Muslim Student Union concerning the content of the event. More specifically, according to a representative from Woodbridge 5, they described the screening as a "student film," despite the involvement of outside political organizations like CAIR.

20080410

Daniel Henninger's OpEd in the Wall St. Journal, Wonder Land: Would this conversation be different today if in August 2006 seven airliners had taken off from Terminal 3 at Heathrow Airport, bound for the U.S. and Canada and each carrying about 250 passengers, and then blew up over the Atlantic Ocean?

The details emerging from that case are quite remarkable and will be summarized shortly. Pause to reflect on the ebb and flow of public debate that has occurred over how free societies should order themselves after two airliners full of passengers knocked down the World Trade Center Towers on Sept. 11 in 2001.

The view that 9/11 "changed everything" did not hold up under the weight of our politics. Divisions re-emerged between Democrats and Republicans, in office and on the streets. These fights reignited over the Patriot Act, Guantanamo and the warrantless wiretap bill (or "FISA" revision). These arguers stopped to stare momentarily at their televisions when Islamic terrorists committed mass murder in the 2004 Madrid train bombing and the 2005 London subway bombing.

One sometimes gets the feeling that our policy debates over national security and the journalism that travels with them float, as it were, at 30,000 feet above the reality of the threat on the ground. A novelist or filmmaker, alert to the personal demons that drive modern terror, would with fiction better clarify what is at stake. Start with the details of the eight defendants now on trial in England.

The names of the accused plotters, all men in their 20s, are Abdullah Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar, Tanvir Hussain, Mohammed Gulzar, Ibrahim Savant, Arafat Khan, Waheed Zaman and Umar Islam. They lived around London, in Walthamstow, Leyton, Plaistow and Barking. Most are Pakistanis.

Abdullah Ahmed Ali was caught on a wiretap telling his wife that he wished to bring his baby son along on the suicide mission. She resists. His suicide video, intended to become public after the planes blew up and shown at trial, promises "floods of martyr operations against you" and "your people's body parts decorating the streets."

In the UK TimesOnline excerpts from the “martyrdom video” of Umar Islam (via Little Green Footballs), he mocks complacent Brits: "Most of you too busy, you know, watching Home and Away and EastEnders, complaining about the World Cup, drinking your alcohol."

This would be fascinating as one nut's reason for murder. It is instead the basis for an ideology to justify blowing up thousands.

The prosecution said a computer memory stick on one of the men at his arrest listed the targeted flights. They were: United Airlines Flight 931 to San Francisco; UA959 to Chicago; UA925 to Washington; Air Canada 849 to Toronto; AC865 to Montreal; American Airlines 131 to New York and AA91 to Chicago. The first flight would depart at 2:15 p.m., the last at 4:50 p.m., allowing all to be aloft and out of U.S. or British airspace when they fell.

The private intelligence-analysis agency, Stratfor, concludes from the trial that "al Qaeda remains fixated on aircraft as targets and, in spite of changes in security procedures since 9/11, aircraft remain vulnerable to attack."

The men planned to take the bomb pieces onboard for assembly: empty plastic bottles, a sugary drink powder, hydrogen peroxide and other materials to be detonated with the flash on disposable cameras.

The arrests of the men, who say they are innocent, were the result of broad and prolonged surveillance. For months, the suspects were bugged, photographed and wiretapped...

"Atrocity" is a cruel and ugly word, but it has come to define the common parameters of the world we inhabit. It is entertaining to watch the candidates trying to convince the American people of their ability to be presidential. It would be more than nice to know, before one of them turns into a real president this November, what they will do – or more importantly, will never do – to stop what those eight jihadists sitting in the high-security Woolwich Crown Court in London planned for seven America-bound airliners over the Atlantic Ocean.

20080409

Aaron Klein of WorldNetDaily reports: U.S.-backed negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians are expected to generate an agreement by the end of the year that would set up a Palestinian state in the West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem, according to a source who has participated in the talks.

According to the source who has been playing a role in the meetings, the two sides are drafting an agreement, to be signed by the end of the year, requiring Israel to evacuate most of the West Bank and certain eastern sections of Jerusalem.

The source said Israeli community blocks in the zones of Gush Etzion, Maale Adumin and Ariel would remain Israeli while most of the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem will be slated for a Palestinian state.

In contradiction to statements by Olmert, the status of sections of Jerusalem is being negotiated but the specifics of any agreed-upon Israeli withdrawal is as yet unclear, said the source.

"It is understood [Jerusalem] Arab neighborhoods would become part of a Palestinian state," the source said.

The source told WND both sides agreed Israel would retain Jerusalem's Pisgat Zeev neighborhood, which is located near large Arab communities. Many of those Arab towns were constructed illegally on property owned by the Jewish National Fund, a Jewish nonprofit that purchases property using Jewish donors funds for the stated purpose of Jewish settlement.

At the same time, Israel Today reports: Israeli authorities in recent weeks began seizing weapons issued to Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria (the so-called "West Bank") to protect them in case of Palestinian terrorist infiltrations into their communities.

The move comes at the same time that Israel, under US pressure, is fulfilling its latest security gesture to the Palestinian Authority by removing from Judea and Samaria tens of military checkpoints and roadblocks meant to hinder the movement of terrorists.

In a letter this week to the Israeli army commander in charge of the region encompassing Judea and Samaria, Dani Daya, who chairs the council of Jewish communities in the area, expressed shock and deep concern that "these steps are being carried out...at the same time that unprecedented steps are being taken to ease the security restrictions on Palestinians."

Daya and others suggested that the parallel moves appear to have been coordinated to purposely undermine the security of Jews living in Judea and Samaria as the government tries to accelerate plans to surrender the area to the Arabs.

20080408

Al-Qaida's nuclear attack against the US is in planning stages, top American intelligence officials have said. (Among others) Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, the director of Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence for the Department of Energy testified before the Congressional committee on Congressional Committee on Homeland Security on April 2.

Mowatt-Larssen said the US successes against Taliban in Afghanistan have yielded volumes of information that completely changed its view of Al-Qaida's nuclear program. ''We learned that Al-Qaida wants a weapon to use, not a weapon to sustain and build a stockpile, as most states would,'' he said.

'The nuclear threats that surfaced in June 2002 and continued through the fall of 2003 demonstrated that Al-Qaida's desire for a nuclear capability may have survived their removal from their Afghanistan safe haven,'' he said.

Observing that the Al-Qaida's nuclear intent remains clear, he said it obtained a fatwa in May 2003 that approved the use of weapons of mass destruction. Al-Qaida spokesman Suleyman Abu Ghayth declared that it is Al-Qaida's right to kill four million Americans in retaliation for Muslim deaths that Al-Qaida blames on the United States.

''Osama bin Laden said in 1998 that it was an Islamic duty to acquire weapons of mass destruction. In 2006, bin Laden reiterated his statement that Al-Qaida will return to the United States.

He said Al-Qaida has a track record of returning to finish a job they started. They failed at the World Trade Center in 1993. They came back in 2001. They canceled plans for chemical attacks in the US in 2003. ''We do not yet know when and where they intend to strike us next, but our past experience strongly suggests they are seeking an attack more spectacular than 9/11,'' he said.

''To delve a little into how they may be thinking about the nuclear option, at any given moment, Al-Qaida probably has attack plans in development. Nine-eleven was planned when the USS Cole was attacked in Yemen and when our embassies in Dar es Salaam and Tanzania were attacked in Africa,'' he said.

In 2005, DemoCast was among the first to enlighten the public via television to the nature of Islamist imperialism and the risks of Western concessions to appease it. Our forecasts regarding de-occupying 'Palestine' in Gaza proved accurate. Israeli cities now suffer direct bombardment. Jihadists throughout the world are emboldened to the justness of the Islamist quest to conquer Israel and dominate the world.

On Wednesday, we return to iLifeTV to discuss Islamism's success in garnering greater support and influence throughout the West (and the world) by co-opting the press' reportage of the Palestine / Israel conflict in order to stimulate anti-Israelism/anti-Semitism, and conversely philo-Muslim-ism.

20080407

Israel will reportedly be appearing before Congress to give US lawmakers a full briefing on the September 6th IDF bombing raid against the North Korean-built nuclear installation in Syria. Sunday it was reported that Congress has forced the administration's hand on the issue by making its approval of the administration's intelligence budget contingent on receiving a full briefing on the raid.

Sunday it was reported that Congress has forced the administration's hand on the issue by making its approval of the administration's intelligence budget contingent on receiving a full briefing on the raid.

Israel, which initially was upset with the administration's insistence on silencing all discussion of the Sept. 6 operation, is now reportedly unhappy with the administration's decision to release its details. ... The administration is expected to provide the information at Congressional hearings later in the month and Israeli Defense Ministry officials are beside themselves.

Defense officials fear that the revelation of Syria's rogue activities will push Syrian dictator Bashar Assad over the edge. ... (Israel) also has an interest in protecting intelligence sources and methods which may be compromised by a disclosure of the operation. ...

Israel has its own strategic interest in exposing Syria and building an operational alliance with the US to defeat Syria and Iran in the war that they wage with North Korean assistance against Israel and the US. ...

Syria's apparent nuclear proliferation with Iran and North Korea requires a reclassification of the threat posed by Syria from nuisance to strategic threat.

Finally, American lawmakers have argued that understanding the Israeli operation is essential for understanding the nature of the Iranian-Syrian-North Korean alliance. By preventing the release of details on the raid, the administration is denying Congress and the American public the ability to understand the rationale and the modes of operation of arguably the greatest threat to US national security. How can Congress support an ally like Israel if it doesn't understand why what Israel does promotes US national security interests? And how can Congress support US actions in the war if it isn't aware of the nature of the axis fighting the US?

An upcoming joint US-Israel report on the Israel Air Force strike on a Syrian facility on September 6th will claim that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein transferred weapons of mass destruction to the country, Israel's Channel 2 News stated Monday.

From World Net Daily Feb 15, 2006: Saddam Hussein's No. 2 Air Force officer, Georges Sada, told the New York Sun Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were moved to Syria six weeks before the war started. Sada claimed two Iraqi Airways Boeing jets converted to cargo planes moved the weapons in a total of 56 flights. They attracted little attention, he said, because they were thought to be civilian flights providing relief from Iraq to Syria, which had suffered a flood after a dam collapse in 2002. View the video of General Sada's January 2006 appearance on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes here.

Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti, southern regional commander for Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen militia in the late 1980s was known as the "Butcher of Basra." Al-Tikriti commanded units that dealt with chemical and biological weapons. He defected shortly before the Gulf War in 1991. He acknowledged to WorldThreats.com's Ryan Mauro:

I know Saddam's weapons are in Syria due to certain military deals that were made going as far back as the late 1980's that dealt with the event that either capitols were threatened with being overrun by an enemy nation. Not to mention I have discussed this in-depth with various contacts of mine who have confirmed what I already knew. At this point Saddam knew that the United States were eventually going to come for his weapons and the United States wasn't going to just let this go like they did in the original Gulf War. He knew that he had lied for this many years and wanted to maintain legitimacy with the pan Arab nationalists.

He also has wanted since he took power to embarrass the West and this was the perfect opportunity to do so. After Saddam denied he had such weapons why would he use them or leave them readily available to be found? That would only legitimize President Bush, who he has a personal grudge against. What we are witnessing now is many who opposed the war to begin with are rallying around Saddam saying we overthrew a sovereign leader based on a lie about WMD. This is exactly what Saddam wanted and predicted.

20080405

From edited transcript of the (Paul) Eidelberg Report, broadcast on Israel National Radio, February 25, 2008.

It should be borne in mind that Brzezinski, a political scientist, served as President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. One does not have to read Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid to know that Carter is an anti-Semite.

Brzezinski has earned the same reputation. It behooves us to understand the mentality of Obama’s Middle East adviser—and more deeply than our so-called experts.

20080404

Existential pleadings from a Zionist in America to Israelis; and from an Israeli pioneer to world Jewry.

The Silent Jews by Jewish-American commentator, Adina Kutnicki, addressed to Israelis, in Israel National News

For an entire portion of the Jewish population to live under siege, while the remainder remains generally oblivious to their plight, is not only unseemly, but it places Jewish lives the world over in peril. Whatever is allowed to happen to a portion of Jews in Israel reverberates worldwide. For if Jews do not care enough to protect their own, surely the expectation for strangers to do otherwise is clearly whistling past the graveyard.

Furthermore, history will be totally unforgiving to this generation of Jews, who have been blessed to return to reclaim their homeland and to have the finest army in the Middle East, yet who remain passive as sheep to the slaughter. The calling to this generation of Jews - both in Israel and in the Diaspora - is to meet these deadly challenges we are faced with in a bold, resolute and unflinching manner. Our collective fate depends on how we answer the call to what history has placed before us, by confronting Israel's malignant leadership and our outside enemies seeking to destroy us.

Zionist Israeli pioneer and former Parliamentarian, Elyakim ha' Etzni, once among Hebron’s original settlers remains an important leader. A practicing attorney, he still remains a most clarion voice to the Jewish state and the world about the strategic necessity of supporting the Jewish return to their ancestral homeland, especially with regard to the nature of global Islamist imperialism. He summons world Jewry to step-up now in Israel's moment of need. Where is American Jewry? in the Jewish Press.

"We address our cries to those for whom Eretz Yisrael still holds a place in their hearts – and to their organizations and institutions. We ask them the following: Where are you in our hour of need? Don’t you know that if we sink, the ground beneath your own feet will quake? Have you not yet learned that the very fact that the Jews have their own country has buttressed your status in the Diaspora?

Don’t you understand the danger looming over Israel? The entire world, led by the United States, is hunting Israel down to wrest from it Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, the Land of the Bible – its entire raison d’etre as a Jewish state.

And faced with all this, you remain silent? Worse, most of your organizations support this anti-Jewish, pro-Arab policy! Today, missiles are flying from the ruins of Gush Katif and landing in the Negev. On the day that missiles are being launched from the ruins of the Jewish towns in Samaria, please don’t say, “We didn’t see. We didn’t hear. We didn’t know." You knew very well!

The Annapolis Conference, in which a blind, stumbling, defeatist Israeli government open to American pressure knowingly consented to commit national suicide, occurred in your country. Rice, whose total identification with Palestinian interests is patently obvious, is applauded by your audiences. And you call President Bush, the man with the “vision” of a Palestinian state that will endanger every city and village in Israel, “the greatest friend Israel ever had in the White House.” You say this when in reality (and history will be the judge) he is the first president openly and explicitly raising the demand and exerting heavy pressure to establish in our midst a devil, a dragon, a dybbuk – in the form of an Islamic, Arabic, radical terrorist state called by the false name of “Palestine.” That state would transform every day in the life of the Jewish state to Hell. And all this for the sake of a fictitious people and a fictitious land that never existed throughout history.

Many Jews in America have good reason to be embarrassed that the only organized American community supporting the rights of the Jewish people to its historic homeland in Judea and Samaria and its eternal capital, Jerusalem, consists of non-Jews. They are the Evangelical Christians. For Jews faithful to their patrimony, some Christian churches are more open today than many Jewish temples. Their organizations and media are more open to nationalistic Jews than are the mainstream Jewish establishment. They visit Hebron, Shiloh and Beit El – places that many Jewish leaders stay away from.

Everyone talks about the political power of American Jewry, but from here we see only the weakness and lockstep obedience to every presiding administration. We ask ourselves, “Why do Christian pastors have no inhibitions about criticizing their president regarding his policy toward Israel, while Jewish rabbis wouldn’t dare?” Please send comments to Zvi Katzover, mayor of Kiryat Arba, at Rivka@kiryat4.org.il.

20080403

The Jerusalem Post is reporting some debate over Prof. Robert Wistrich's remarks in Britain that the UK has become Europe's center of anti-Semitism.

One replier to Tom Phillips' article in the JPost, "British Jews are free from fear" named Avrom writes:

"I live in the East End of London, and I do not feel comfortable admitting my Jewish identity or wearing a kippah outside. I'm often stopped by (mainly Asian) youths and harrassed if I do. Police do nothing here - a couple of months ago a Jewish woman was beaten up by a group of youths yelling anti-semtic slurs and she was put in hospital. The police said they would not be carrying the investigation forward, despite numerous witnesses. This is not an isolated example. During a JEECS conference, the police security actually left when a group showed up, who then threw rocks threw the windows.

The Jewish Establishment's ineffectual response to years of the BBC's pro-Palestinian / anti-Israel rhetoric has contributed to a climate of Israel vs Palestine blood libel.

An Editorial in Big News Network.com attempted to excuse the Jerusalem Yeshiva massacre on the basis of Israel's occupation of Palestine. He also attempted to vilify Israel for the call for retaliation by Safad's Chief Rabbi, despite the Palestinians' apology.

The Palestinians have been de-occupied in Gaza (Israeli-free) since 2-and-a-half years ago (prior to Hurricane Katrina!) Why won't they ever respect the safety of Israel and work to co-exist peacefully?

The true heart of the conflict is the Arab oil (and Iranian) tyrants' rejection of a Jewish state in their culturally Arab/Islamic-dominant midst. A successful, strong Jewish nation within the 'ummah' (Islam's perceived geosphere of dominance- aiming back to Spain), makes them appear (and feel) inferior. Moreover, it invalidates the Prophet Mohammed's commanded supremacism of Islam over other faiths and peoples.

The author lies by alleging the heart of the conflict is Israeli occupation - Israel withdrew defensive forces from Gaza almost 3-years ago as its concession towards peace. It gave the PLO a chance to prove its capability in readiness for peaceful 'statehood.'

Today, Palestinians use that conceded territory to rocket-attack civilians, kindergartens in the Israeli cities of Sderot and Ashkelon daily.

The Palestinian Authority is at war with Israel to conquer all Israel for Islam. 84% of the PA Arabs approved of the Jewish yeshiva massacre - of the slaying of 8 and the wounding of 9 more pious, teenage Torah students.

The Palestinians celebrated the massacre of Jews - with dancing and candy. They regaled in it. Hamas who first denied it, today proudly boasts responsibility for it.

The US 'road-map monitors' are chastising the PA for not fighting terror - for reasons that have nothing to do with training or equipment.

"Specifically, the Americans are concerned that the PA does not engage in the full spectrum of counterterrorism activities, including arrests, interrogation and trial, as it would if it were trying to eradicate the armed wings of Islamic terrorist organizations."

The Islamic-war strategy of attacking mercilessly when they have an advantage, while when they're subdued, cunningly seeking "Mercy" in order to re-arm and re-attack has historic precedent.

Only when Israel retailiates do Arabs (and their comrades) cry-wolf, with the canard of "seeking a peaceful and pragmatic solution to the Arab-Israel conflict."

Because if peace is what the Arabs (including the editorialist) really wanted, they've had 2-and-a-half-years to Israel show it. The sovereign country Israel is legitimately established, UN-approved, Israeli (not Arab) land. Palestinian-lovers: stop whining and attacking, and implement a viable, co-existable society in Gaza and W Bank instead of an armed struggle to 'liberate' Jerusalem (i.e. all Jewish sovereignty).

Stop pissing on the world's heads and blaming the 'rain' on Israel. Hamas and Fatah's quest is the merely the local front of the Global Jihad for Muslim supremacy throughout the world (funded by trillions of petro-dollars siphoned by the Arabs from the West).

The West is fed-up with giving Islamic supremacism the freedom / rope to hang us with. Your facade is exposed, the West is fed-up with unrest-driven oil-prices funding domestic terrorism- and we're finally defending ourselves against encroaching Islamist-supremacism double-think.

Yechiel Leiter, former assistant to Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, speaks about "The people of Gush Katif and the withdrawal that led to the attacks on Sderot."Tonight, Thursday 3 April at 7:30pm at Nessah Synagogue, 142 S. Rexford Dr. Beverly Hills, CA 90212RSVP: niyp@nessah.org

20080401

CBN News' Dale Hurd follows-up his "European anti-Americanism" series with a new video news report on "European anti-Semitism."

"Even though many European governments have condemned the new rise in anti-Semitism, there is a clear perception among many Jews that Europe's terrible history is somehow coming back to life."

"Jewish communities around the world are under more pressure now than at any time since 1945," says Prof. Robert Wistrich of Hebrew University in Israel. Wistrich is the son of Polish Jews who fled the Holocaust. "Here we are 60 years after that and what lessons have been learned? Not enough."

Distorted Media Coverage

Throughout Europe, distorted and one-sided news coverage has created an Israel that is aggressive and evil.

"It's a demonization based on a radical detextualization, de-legitimization that's been going on," Melanie Phillips, a British conservative, says. "And if you're the averagely ignorant Brit, watching your TV, listening to your radio, you believe it. That's your world view."

In France, a court is deciding whether a government TV channel, France2, showed faked footage of the supposed death of a Palestinian boy, Mohammed al-Durah, during the second intifada in 2000, to make it look like he was killed by Israeli solders. When the judge ordered France2 to turn over all of its footage of the incident, it also showed the boy moving his arms and peering through his fingers after he was supposed to be dead.

But Muslim rage at the original France2 news story led to countless reprisals against Jews around the world. It was even mentioned by terrorists as a reason for the beheading Daniel Pearl.

DemocracyBroadcastingNews.com says the France2 story "globally defames the Jewish nation, Israel, with a fabricated icon of hypocritical brutality and immorality; and criminalizes Jews and their State to justify pariah-punishment."

The EU says Muslims are responsible for half of all attacks on Jews in Europe. In France, Muslims outnumber Jews 10 to 1. Nidra Poller, an American writer and commentator in Paris, says the government and media are afraid of the Muslims.

"The French are using the Muslims, allowing the Muslims, to express this vicious and violent, murderous Jews hatred, and they get a free ride on their old fashioned anti-Semitism," Poller said. "The whole Lebanon war was shown from the Hezbollah point of view. Israel was the villain. And Hezbollah were the innocents who were suffering. So all the Muslims in France got another dose of Jew hatred."

And when Israel invaded Lebanon in 2006, anti-Semitic violence in Europe surged.

Surpising, But Not Unique

Anti-Semitism is by no means just a European phenomenon. But it is in Europe, the place of the Holocaust, where the return of anti-semitism is so surprising.

As a boy in the Netherlands, Manfred Gerstenfeld hid from the Nazis in an upstairs apartment. He may have never believed it could happen again. But he now believes Europe is re-living the 1930s.

"A senior Dutch politician told me a few months ago, 'Look, the Jews have to understand that in the Netherlands, they have no future,' he said.

In large part because Israel lost the media war in Europe long ago, and the Jews are still paying for it."